Locals talk about a new law giving transgender students access to school facilities

By AMY ASMAN

GENDER EXPRESSION

This infographic, inspired by information from Sam Killermann’s blog, itspronouncedmetrosexual.com, helps illustrate the way people express their gender and sexual preferences.

INFOGRAPHIC BY HEATHER WALTER

Bathroom. Restroom. Toilet. Loo. The place in which people do their business has many names, but one universal purpose. Most of us don’t think twice about using this facility, it’s such an everyday occurrence: When nature calls, we make our way through one of two doors, depending on our gender, and that’s that.

But imagine if you didn’t know which door to choose. What if the way you felt on the inside—your personal identity—didn’t match the way you looked on the outside?

A new state law that went into effect earlier this year is designed to make that decision—and others—simpler for transgender youth. The first of its kind in the nation, California’s School Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266) gives students equal access to facilities and sports teams based on their gender identities.

Existing state law already prohibits public schools from discriminating against students based on race, religion, gender, gender identity, and gender expression. It also requires that boys and girls have equal access to various physical education and sports activities.

Signed into law last August, AB 1266 now allows students to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and to use facilities consistent with their gender identity, regardless of the genders listed on their records.

John Davis, assistant superintendent of curriculum for the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District, told the Sun AB 1266 is being implemented in his district just like any other law that applies to public schools.

“This is really no different than any other piece of legislation that comes down in terms of anti-discrimination and equality. We’ll figure it out just like anything else,” Davis said. “We have a lot of different kids with different needs. We’re used to working toward things with sensitivity and awareness.”

There are some people, however, who don’t share Davis’ perspective of the law.

Last fall, a group called Privacy For All Students—which on its website describes itself as “a coalition of parents, students, nonprofit and faith groups”—launched a referendum effort to let voters decide whether to accept the legislation on the November 2014 ballot.

The Sun submitted a request for comment to the group, but had yet to hear back as of press time.

On its website, privacyforallstudents.com, the group argues that AB 1266 isn’t necessary because state law already protects transgender students against discrimination and bullying.

Privacy For All Students also argues that the law is poorly crafted, and that California voters should have the right to make such an important decision.

“There are many problems with the legislation. First, it’s an invasion of student privacy to open sensitive school facilities such as showers, restrooms and locker rooms to students of the opposite sex,” a post in the site’s “frequently asked questions” page read. “Further, the legislation is poorly drafted and flawed, a one-size-fits-all approach that contains no standards, guidelines or rules. The law does not require that a student have ever demonstrated any indication that he she or considers himself or herself as transgendered.

“A student can assert a gender identity at school at any time,” the post continued. “Because gender identity is based on feelings and perceptions, he or she can be both transgender and heterosexual at the same time. Because of the lack of requirements, some teens and young adults will undoubtedly game the law.”

The term “game the law” refers to the group’s concern that some students who are straight will say they’re transgender to gain access to bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex, thus compromising other students’ privacy and safety.

Based on those views, the group started collecting signatures for a petition shortly after the bill was signed into law.

According to the California Secretary of State’s Office, petitions must be signed by registered voters in an amount equal to 5 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. The current number of signatures required is 504,760.

Privacy For All Students and its supporters collected almost 620,000 signatures. The Secretary of State’s Office initially declined to count signatures in Tulare and Mono counties because questions arose over whether they were submitted in time for the deadline, which occurred over this past Veterans Day, a federal holiday. However, a Sacramento Superior Court judge ruled in January that the office must count all of the signatures.

The petition created a hailstorm of activity from advocates on both sides of the issue, including Privacy For All Students, the National Organization for Marriage California, the Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others.

There have been plenty of opinion pieces written and protests and vigils staged. The discussion even made its way onto television in an episode of the popular show Glee, in which a transgender character named Unique gets bullied for trying to use the girls’ restroom at her high school. As a solution, the principal, Sue Sylvester, buys a purple port-a-potty, paints a bunch of yellow question marks on it, and bolts it to the choir room floor. The episode ends with the choir teacher, Will Schuester, offering to open the staff restroom for Unique whenever she needs to use it.

Maggie White, a representative for the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, said her district had a similar, albeit unofficial policy in place even before AB 1266 went into effect. She said when students feel unsafe using the boys’ or girls’ restrooms—whether they identify as transgender or have some other need—they use staff facilities or the one in the nurse’s office.

She said these decisions are made among the school administrators, students, and their parents, and that district staffers are aware of who might be in need of such a solution.

“[Educators are] going to know some joker who comes in out of nowhere and says they want to use the bathroom of the opposite sex,” White said.

She estimates students are only going to seek out the benefits of the law if doing so is really important to them.

“Finding and discovering your sexuality—it’s tough,” she said, adding that, in her experience as a school official, “most kids want to fly under the radar … they just want to have their friends and go to school, and fit in like everyone else.”

A brother’s perspective

Tony* is a senior at Righetti High School in Santa Maria. In a recent interview with the Sun, the 18-year-old said he supports AB 1266 and the rights it extends to transgender students.

The law is especially important to Tony because his sister, who we’ll call Stephanie*, is transgender. He said if AB 1266 had been around several years ago when Stephanie was in high school, it probably would’ve helped her transition more smoothly.

“My brother was always really quiet, and we didn’t know what it was. I just thought he was being my quiet brother,” Tony said, adding that it wasn’t until he came out to his family as gay that his brother had the courage to come out as trans.

“She came out only to me about three months after I came out,” Tony said. “It was a bit of a surprise, but I immediately accepted her for who she was because that’s what she did with me.”

He said both revelations have been difficult for their family to accept, but they’re working on it together.

“Sometimes they still make fun of homosexuality by saying, ‘Oh, that’s so gay,’ [but gay is] not a synonym for lame or dumb or stupid,” he said. “And sometimes we argue about which pronoun to call [Stephanie]. I’ll remind them to say ‘she,’ and they’ll say, ‘but he/she hasn’t had the surgery yet.’”

Tony, for his part, is completely accepting of his sister, whom he’s shared a room with his entire life.

“I don’t see her as male anymore. I see her as who she is,” he said.

He remembers Stephanie wanting to use the girls’ restroom when she was in high school: He said, “She was afraid … that a teacher or students would ask, ‘why are you using the girls’ bathroom? You’re a guy.’”

Also, he said she always wanted to play female characters in drama class, but wasn’t allowed to.

Tony hopes the new law will help a friend of his, who is transgender, feel more comfortable at school—and in his skin.

“He has a lot of issues being himself at school, and he can’t necessarily be himself at home,” Tony said of his friend, Mark.*

Tony said Mark, who was born biologically female, has started hiding his female body parts, restricting his chest to the point that he has trouble breathing.

He said the pain Mark goes through, both physically and emotionally, is heartbreaking to watch.

“It hurts to see the way people treat [transgender people], and how society questions them,” Tony said.

As an openly gay teenager, Tony knows what it feels like to be made fun of and discriminated against, but he said there’s a big difference between being gay and transgender.

“It’s a whole different concept. Being gay is just your sexuality; when you’re transgender, you feel like you weren’t born in the right body,” he said.

For example, Tony said he sometimes likes to wear a rainbow shirt to express his gay pride, and most people don’t give it a second glance. But when someone is trans, he said, they often want to wear the clothes they feel match their gender, but don’t because society will look down on them.

“It’s really heartbreaking when you can’t be who you are in the inside, when you can’t show that to the world,” Tony said,

He said his sister suffered because “she never understood that her being a girl was OK.”

Respecting everyone’s rights

Representatives from both of the districts the Sun contacted for this article said they have yet to receive any calls from the public regarding the law. Similarly, both Santa Maria-Bonita’s White and Santa Maria Joint Union’s Davis said they have yet to hear of a student taking advantage of the law.

“Knowing the law has passed, and that the protection is there, may encourage students to seek recognition,” Davis said. “But I think students typically don’t seek to make their peer group uncomfortable.”

Nonetheless, both districts have taken steps to educate their faculties and staff members about the law, and they’re in the process of developing a plan for addressing the needs of transgender students.

“We’re going to handle each case on an individual basis,” Davis said. “Some students may just want to be left alone [because] they’re afraid it will create animosity or discomfort with other students. Others may be perfectly fine with pushing it.”

He said he’s sensitive to the fact that this a complicated issue and that the district wants to respect the rights of transgender students and their parents, and the rights of other students and parents “who might not be comfortable with that kind of exposure.”

He thinks if the referendum does get on the ballot and the law is reversed, lawsuits will pour in to defend transgender rights.

“It will be decided in the courts, and there are going to be strong feelings on both sides of the aisles on this,” he said.

Talking ’bout their generation

Pioneer Valley High School students Aylin Saldador and David Mendez, on the other hand, don’t understand why the law is such a big deal.

“We don’t get any privacy in the boys’ bathrooms anyway—there aren’t any walls,” Mendez said. “The girls get more privacy, though.”

Saldador said she thinks her school’s student body is accepting enough to handle a law like AB 1266.

“I feel like our school is focused more on unity. We don’t really see bullying here. It’s not like what you see in the movies.”

She said there are a handful of transgender students at her school, “and everyone loves them.

“We just help them. We don’t care who they are or who they want to be,” she said, adding, “It’s not the parents who come here. They’re not the ones who use the bathroom. … We’re more mature than our parents think we are.”

Mendez said he experienced that sense of unity firsthand when he came out to his peers last year.

“I came out in front of all the jocks, and you know what they did? They hugged me and told me they respected me more because of it. It was amazing. I had no hate,” he said.

Both Mendez and Saldador, who is straight, think their generation is more tolerant than generations past because they’ve been exposed to diversity from a young age.

“Being gay is not bad,” Mendez said. “Transgender is something new because it hasn’t been out there as much as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but I think, with more attention, people will come to accept it.”

He said the adults he interacts with at school are supportive of him, too, including his coach.

“My coach asked me if I’d be more comfortable playing football or cheerleading, and I said cheering because I didn’t want to get hurt out on the field,” he said.

Now Mendez is a member of the cheer squad, along with several other boys, and he said he experienced “no hate, no laughter” when he joined.

“It was normal,” he said.

Sometimes the boys will even dress up in wigs and tutus and cheer for the other team, and while there are some people who make fun of them, he said most of the school likes it.

Equality through the years

SIDEBAR: EQUALITY THROUGH THE YEARS

John Davis of the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District said laws like AB 1266 often stir up controversy.

“The public complained about handicapped accommodations back when the Americans with Disabilities Act passed. People were concerned about who would pay for them,” Davis said, adding that many people argued disabled students shouldn’t be mainstreamed into public schools.

He said the ongoing debate over AB 1266 is typical.

“We may be working on this [law] for a while,” he added.

The following is a timeline of milestone anti-discrimination legislation.

1954: In Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court declared separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional, thus paving the way for integration.

1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women.

1972: Title IX—best known for its impact on sports funding—bans sex-based discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

1990: The far-reaching Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination based on physical or mental disabilities by all public entities.

2000: Under the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act, all California public schools must protect students from discrimination and/or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

2004: California legislators clarify that the term “gender” means a person’s gender identity, appearance, and behavior regardless of his or her sex at birth.

2008: The California Safe Place to Learn Act requires the Department of Education to regularly monitor school districts to ensure compliance with the Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act.

2013: California’s School Success and Opportunity Act (AB 1266) expands existing anti-discrimination law to give students access to facilities and activities based on gender identity

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